


Rising Tide

by the_original_n_chan



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alec/Eliot in context of OT3, Developing Relationship, Don't Post To Another Site, Gender Change, MerMay 2020, Merperson Eliot Spencer, Multi, OT3, Parker Ships It, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24499951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_original_n_chan/pseuds/the_original_n_chan
Summary: With the three of them trapped in a cave and the water rising, Eliot has to take some extraordinary measures.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 23
Kudos: 147





	Rising Tide

Eliot really did  _ not _ want to do this.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t seeing much in the way of other options. Goddamn smugglers, knocking them out and then dumping them in a sea cave and waiting for the rising tide to kill them. Parker’s escape skills meant that at least they weren’t still tied up, but they were trapped on a ledge at the back of the cave with the water rolling steadily higher. The ceiling was low, and the cave mouth was already submerged—they didn’t know how deep. And the only light they had was from the tiny penlight clutched in Hardison’s trembling fingers.

Because yeah, this situation was hitting Hardison right in both his claustrophobia and his fear of drowning. He was on the brink of losing it—would have already freaked out completely if not for Parker talking him through, getting him to focus on his breathing, and on her.

They didn’t have time for Eliot to dick around trying to avoid this. With an annoyed grunt, he started taking off his shoes.

“What’re you doing?” Parker asked, glancing toward him.

“I’m going to scout the cave opening.” He shrugged out of his jacket, pulled off his shirt.

“What?” Hardison yelped. “No, no,  _ no! _ ”

“You got any better ideas?” He undid his pants, then paused. “Parker, turn around.”

“Why?”

“Just—ugh!” Fuck it, no time to explain, and Parker whipped off her clothes around them all the time, so it wasn’t like she’d care. Probably. Stripping off his jeans and underwear, he tossed them aside.

“Why are you getting  _ naked _ ?” Hardison sounded outraged as much as baffled. At least it was distracting him from their circumstances. “This is not a naked swimming kind of situation!” Ignoring him, Eliot stepped off the ledge and plunged into the water.

The icy shock hit him so hard he felt it in his bones. “Fuck!” he yelled as he popped back up to the surface, flipping his hair back out of his face as he gasped for breath. “Fucking  _ hell _ , that’s  _ cold _ .”

“You’re gonna get hypothermia, man, what are you  _ doing _ ?” Hardison whined. He’d scuttled a little closer to the edge, like he was considering dragging Eliot back up to safety. Not particularly helpful, but Eliot appreciated the sentiment.

“Stay here,” he ordered, pointing at Hardison, and by extension at Parker. “I’ll be back.” Hardison’s protests turned muffled as Eliot slipped under again, sinking down into the blackness, that tiny light just a glimmer on the surface, wavering with water’s movement.

Eliot let go, giving himself to the ocean.

And the ocean gave him back.

He drew breath, his gills flaring. He couldn’t see anything, but the sensory spots along his sides read the shifting currents, letting him map the shape of the cave, the location of the opening. He surged toward it, driving himself against the incoming tide with powerful flexes of his tail. He had to dive a little to reach it, but the passage was relatively short and wide enough that getting stuck was unlikely to be an issue. Counting the seconds until he was able to rise and finally breach the surface, he decided that this was doable.

Not easy, but doable.

He flipped, rolled, and dove back through the cave entrance. Before long, he saw that patch of brightness above him and propelled himself upward. When he broke through into the air, he heard a startled exclamation from Hardison, but he couldn’t see anything through the suddenly blinding glare.

“It’s me,” he said, squinting and raising a hand to shade his eyes. “Get that light out of my face.”

“What the—” Hardison spluttered, but the light angled away from Eliot. With an internal sigh, he swam over to the ledge, bracing himself for what was about to come next.

“What—? How—?” Hardison’s voice was pitched so high that it squeaked. He stared bug-eyed at Eliot, panic forgotten, at least for the moment. “You’re a  _ mermaid _ ?”

“Mer _ person _ ,” Eliot growled. His voice wasn’t nearly threatening enough in this form. Hardison let out a breathless laugh.

“Uh, sorry, but—” Hardison cupped his hands suggestively in front of his own chest. Like Eliot was somehow unaware of what he looked like.

“You have a great rack,” Parker remarked. She’d knelt down by the water’s edge, presumably to get a better look at him.

“It’s the water, they float—” Wait, why was he explaining breasts to Parker? “Look, we don’t have time for this. I can swim you guys out. It’s not that far; you can hold your breath.”

Hardison recoiled, shaking his head. “Nuh, nuh-uh.”

“C’mon, man, you can’t stay here.” The whites of Hardison’s eyes flashed as his gaze darted around the cave; he licked his lips anxiously. He wasn’t showing any sign of moving toward the water, and Eliot huffed another silent sigh. Planting his hands on the lip of the ledge (the water was starting to lap over it; they needed to get moving), he pushed himself up on his arms, lifting his upper body out of the water. He flicked a glance at Parker, trying to signal his intent, then focused his attention back on Hardison. Hardison was staring at him again—more precisely, at his chest. He’d put a little arch in his back, pressing his arms inward to squeeze his breasts together in order to maximize cleavage, and his nipples were doing what nipples did when you were freezing your ass fins off. (And it was true, he  _ did _ have a pretty great rack, with or without buoyancy.) Hardison seemed unable to look away.

(And okay, seriously? They needed to work on this with him—one sexy assassin, and he’d be dead meat. If Parker didn’t take down the assassin first. Actually, depending on how mad she was, she might stab the assassin and then Hardison.)

“Hey. Hardison.” He shook his hair out of his face; it fell back over one eye as he tilted his head in invitation. “C’mere.” Reluctant but seemingly drawn in spite of himself, Hardison shuffled forward and crouched in front of him, setting down the light. Keeping his gaze locked with Hardison’s, Eliot told him, voice low and gentled, “You can do this. And I’m gonna be with you this time, okay?” Reaching up, he curled his hand behind Hardison’s neck. Hardison’s eyes lowered to his mouth, and Eliot’s pulse stuttered in a surprise that he didn’t show as he drew Hardison a little nearer—and then Hardison jerked back, lunging to his feet.

“Nope, uh-uh! I see how this goes—you distract me with the,” he waved one hand, “and then you pull me in. Ha!” He grinned as he pointed an accusing finger at Eliot, and that was when Parker pushed him off the ledge.

Eliot shoved off, and when Hardison broke the surface again, yowling like a cat, he grabbed a tight hold. “We’re doing this!” he snapped. “Deep breath, Hardison!”

“No, wait!”

“ _ Deep breath! _ ” He called to Parker, “I’ll be back!” then refocused on Hardison. “One! Two!” Wide-eyed, Hardison desperately gulped air, and—“ _ Three! _ ”

They went under. Eliot wrapped his arms around Hardison’s chest from behind, hooking them under his armpits, so Hardison would be less likely to grapple him if the man actually started drowning, then swam hard for the cave opening. He was slower like this, but he’d added some time to account for it, so they should still be fine.

Just over a minute in, Hardison gave a straining whine of distress. Eliot couldn’t speak, but he patted Hardison’s chest briefly.  _ Almost there. _ They’d cleared the cave mouth and were already angling upward when the first rush of bubbles burst from Hardison’s mouth. With a final surging effort, Eliot brought them the rest of the way to the surface.

They broke through into moonlight, and Hardison gave a sputtering gasp, frantically wiping water out of his eyes. “You’re okay,” Eliot assured him with a clap on the shoulder. “You made it.”

“P-Parker?” Hardison blurted, shivering.

“She’s fine. I’ll go back for her. First I gotta get you to shore.” He started to lie back, drawing Hardison with him, and Hardison tensed. “Just relax—it’s easier this way.” When Hardison gave up resisting, Eliot settled onto his back, arms still wrapped around Hardison’s chest, and started swimming for the beach he’d spotted next to the cliffs.

(Easier like this, yeah, but also awkward in the sense that he was basically shimmying his tail against Hardison’s ass. But whatever. It kept Hardison’s head out of the water—resting on his chest, which was also awkward, come to think of it—and it was the fastest way to swim while dealing with the encumbrance.)

When he sensed that the water had shallowed to wading depth, he rolled to let Hardison stand up. He stayed close, holding position in the waves, until Hardison had staggered nearly all the way to shore, then called, “I’m going to get Parker. Walk around a little, try to warm up.” Before Hardison could answer, he’d submerged, twisting around to race back the way they’d come.

As he approached the cave, he felt something moving up ahead. The four-limbed flailing was distinctive—definitely human—and as he got closer, his eyes were able to make out a shadowy form treading water. Lashing his tail, he launched himself forward and upward, breaking the surface in a rush of furious concern. “ _ Parker! _ I said I was coming back for you!”

She didn’t reply, instead throwing her arms around his neck, her whole body shaking. With a huff, he drew her on top of him, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, clinging to him like a baby sea otter as he began sculling them back to the beach.

Hardison waded out to meet them and help Parker ashore, then came back for Eliot as he thrashed his way out of the water and started army crawling up the sand. Eliot waved him off, not wanting to be dragged. He hauled himself up beyond the high-water mark and flopped onto his side, catching his breath. Hardison had gone to kneel in front of Parker, gently chafing her hands. Luckily the air was a lot warmer than the water, so they weren’t in any danger of freezing, although Parker and Hardison had to be uncomfortable in their soaked clothes.

Speaking of which, Parker reclaimed her hands from Hardison in order to shrug off a small bundle tied to her back—Eliot’s clothes, wrapped up in the rope they’d been tied with. She tossed it in his general direction, and he nodded his thanks.

“You gonna change back?” Hardison asked.

“Yeah. I gotta dry off some first.”

“There might be some towels in that house,” Parker said, and Eliot craned his head around to see the beach house nestled back among the dunes. No lights, so it was unlikely anyone was awake to see them. “I’ll go check.” Springing up, she trotted off over the sand.

With a sigh, Hardison sat down next to Eliot. “Thanks, man,” he said. “I didn’t think we was getting out of there.”

Eliot snorted. “Those guys were amateurs.” Real professionals would have just straight up shot them and pitched them overboard far out from shore, not left them alive someplace where they’d have a chance to survive, however small.

“We’d still have been just as dead, if you hadn’t been there,” Hardison retorted. He was wrong, because they  _ could _ have gotten out—Parker  _ had _ gotten out—if Hardison had been able to overcome his panic. And if it had come right down to it, he probably would have—after all, this was the guy who’d had the presence of mind to suck air out of a goddamned  _ chair _ while handcuffed at the bottom of a swimming pool. But Eliot was glad that Hardison hadn’t needed to. It made up in some tiny way for that time with Moreau, when Eliot  _ hadn’t _ been able to help him.

Hardison was looking at him sidelong. “So how long have you been a....”

“My whole life. Though the turning female thing came later on,” he added. He didn’t know why he felt a need to make the qualification, but there it was.

Hardison’s whole face scrunched up in disbelief. “ _ What? _ How does that even—”

“My kind are just like that. Protandrous sequential hermaphroditism. Look it up.” Hardison’s lips silently shaped the word  _ hermaphrodite _ , and Eliot glared at him, daring him to make a wisecrack about it. Instead, Hardison reached for his phone, and then his expression turned tragic as he remembered that it had been taken from him. Poor baby, no instantaneous access to the internet. Eliot’s heart bled for him.

(Well, actually, it did soften. Hardison had been having a bad enough night.)

Probably to distract himself from that disappointment, Hardison started studying Eliot more directly. It occurred to Eliot to cover his breasts, but eh. Too late for that, and so-called modesty was just a social construct anyway. Maybe if he’d been raised as a girl he’d be more bothered, but when all was said and done, once he’d gotten over the initial outrage at what his biology had done to him, he was still a guy, just with a female body sometimes. And as long as nobody was actively being a dick about it (and Hardison and Parker were the only non-mer people who’d ever seen him like this), it was fine. 

It had been kind of fun, even, having Hardison stare at him like he was sexy.

Well. At the moment, Hardison seemed more fascinated by his tail anyway. His gaze ran the length of it—silvery scales, yellowish fins, a black lateral line like a racing stripe. “Uh....” His hand hesitated toward Eliot. “Can I...?”

“Sure,” Eliot said, shrugging. Hardison hitched closer, ran his fingers tentatively over Eliot’s scales, then jerked them back.

“Oh, ew,” he said, shaking his hand, then wiping it on his pants. “That is—what  _ is _ that?”

Eliot had to laugh at the look on his face. “Fish slime. It’s to protect the scales.”

“See, this is yet another reason why I am  _ never _ going outdoor fishing with you.” But Hardison reached out again and stroked Eliot’s side, lightly at first, then a little more firmly. He rested his hand on the curve of Eliot’s waist, where the scales blended with skin. Eliot’s body ran cold in this form; the touch was a pleasant warmth.

Withdrawing his hand at last, Hardison shook his head with a laugh. “This is so weird, man. First the fact that merpeople even exist—which is cool, don’t get me wrong, but it, like, shakes my entire worldview. So, what, are there elves out there too? Orcs?  _ Dragons? _ ” He didn’t wait for Eliot to respond (the answer would’ve been,  _ how the fuck would I know? _ ), instead rolling onward, “And second, seeing you look like a girl—”

“Woman.”

“—a woman, but somehow it’s still a hundred percent  _ you _ . Like, the mannerisms, the expressions, the whole  _ attitude _ . I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. Even when you was grifting me, that was still somehow an  _ Eliot _ grift.” Hardison chuckled again, more softly. “For real, man, I thought you was gonna kiss me back there.”

Eliot blinked, bemused. “I thought  _ you _ were gonna kiss  _ me _ .”

Hardison glanced at him, seeming surprised, and their gazes locked for a moment that drew out uncomfortably long and felt weirdly significant. It dawned on Eliot that they were probably both having some kind of feelings about this. He had no idea what to do with that information.

“Towels!” Parker announced, having somehow managed to come up on them unexpectedly even on a wide-open expanse of beach. She dumped an eye-burning flamingo-patterned atrocity on Eliot, and he took refuge in the action of wiping himself down. “Of course Eliot’s still Eliot,” she added, chucking another towel at Hardison and then dropping the rest in between them. “Duh.”

“It doesn’t matter what my body looks like; I’m still a man,” Eliot added emphatically. He glowered at Parker, who had plopped down next to him and was prodding curiously at his chest. “Parker, leave my tits alone and make yourself useful.” Ignoring the choking sound coming from Hardison, he shoved a towel at her. “Wipe  _ with _ the lie of the scales, not against it,” he warned. The experience otherwise was like having a dozen tiny fingernails pulled out all at once.

That extra pair of hands was actually helpful and not just a distraction for Parker—despite his speed and maneuverability while swimming, his fish part wasn’t all that flexible, and he couldn’t reach the end of his tail without some embarrassing contortions. Fairly soon the rest of the water and the slime had been wiped away; he could feel his scales starting to loosen, the influence of the sea slipping away.

Draping a drier towel over what was going to be his lap, he focused on breathing in and letting go. Scales and fins sloughed away, leaving drifts of silver dissolving on the sand; he didn’t look at the others, but he could feel Hardison staring as his body reshaped itself. He bent his knees finally, flexed his feet, wriggled his toes. Everything felt normal, so he stood up, a little clumsily. It always took a minute or so to get used to being upright again.

Turning his back on Parker and Hardison, he brushed off some of the sand still clinging to him and unwrapped his clothes. He’d just navigated the leg holes of his jeans and was pulling them up when Parker remarked, “I think you guys  _ should _ kiss.”

Eliot lost his balance and nearly fell over; behind him, Hardison was shrilly squawking, “ _ What! _ ” Yanking his pants the rest of the way on, Eliot faced about and glared at them both for all he was worth.

Hardison held up his hands in mingled surrender and deflection. “No—no, no, no! That isn’t—that—I mean—”

“There’s no kissing going on here,” Eliot snarled. Okay, so maybe he’d played at being sexy to distract Hardison (and maybe he’d enjoyed it just a little), and maybe they’d had a  _ moment _ , whatever the fuck that meant, but he didn’t want to kiss Hardison, and Hardison didn’t want to kiss him. End of story. “What the hell, Parker, why would you even suggest—”

“You can’t tell me you weren’t thinking about it,” she said with a shrug. “You both had the look.” She did the two-fingered eye-pointing gesture, first at Hardison and then at him. It was clearly meant as a statement of fact rather than a warning, but Eliot still felt obscurely threatened.

“The look, what look?” Hardison tried. He didn’t sound very convincing.

Parker ignored him, instead turning to Eliot. “Plus he was staring at your butt just now.”

_ What. _ Eliot’s gaze leaped to Hardison. Hardison’s skin was too dark to really show it, especially by moonlight, but from his expression all the blood had just drained from his face.

“I was  _ not _ —look, it was just  _ there _ , all right?” Under his breath, Hardison added, “Woman, you are going to get me punched out.”

Eliot would never hit him, even in play, and Hardison knew it; he was just being overly dramatic. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Eliot exhaled deliberately, putting aside his knee-jerk reactions and focusing his thoughts.

“First of all,” he said to Parker, with what he thought was admirable calm, “Hardison is  _ your _ boyfriend—what’re you doing telling him that he should kiss someone else?”

“You’re not just ‘someone else,’ ” Parker replied, as if it were obvious. “You’re Eliot.”

That...he wasn’t quite sure how to parse that, especially coming from Parker, but he sensed it was likely to take them way out into the weeds and into a conversation he wasn’t at all prepared to deal with. He switched quickly to another line of attack.

“Second, and more important,” he said firmly, “Hardison isn’t attracted to  _ me _ , okay, he got hot and bothered ’cause he saw a, a mermaid coming on to him. It’s confusing, I get that. But it ain’t real. This,” he gestured at himself, still shirtless, “this is real. This is who I am, inside and—almost always—out.” He snorted dismissively. “Not exactly Hardison’s type.”

“Actually,” Hardison said softly, “bisexuality  _ is _ a thing.”

And all right, sure, Eliot  _ knew _ that, in a general sense at least, but in this particular context, the words threw him for a loop. All he could do was stare as Hardison went on, sounding uncharacteristically diffident.

“I’m not saying that I looked at you like that from the beginning. Didn’t ever cross my mind, really. I mean, I could always appreciate when a guy was hot, but just in an abstract sense, never at the level of actually wanting to do something about it. But I been thinking just now, and, uh.... Yeah. I definitely would’ve kissed you as the, um, female merperson. So then I couldn’t help but ask myself, would I ever want to kiss guy-Eliot?” He swallowed nervously, but his gaze on Eliot held steady. “Turns out that I, uh, would. Be up for that. If it was ever something that you...you know.”

Eliot felt like he’d just discovered that he was standing in a field of land mines. “Yeah, well,  _ I _ don’t want to kiss  _ you _ !” he snapped.

“That’s fine, brother,” Hardison said too quickly. “It’s cool. We can just forget this whole thing ever happened.” But Eliot didn’t miss the glimmer of disappointment as Hardison dropped his gaze, the hurt in the set of his mouth.

_ Damn it _ .

“It’s not that I...,” he found himself saying, then didn’t know where he was going with that. Desperately he tried to regroup.

“It’s okay.” Hardison’s voice was gentle, like he was trying to protect  _ Eliot’s _ feelings, of all things.

Eliot was not having  _ feelings. _

“You guys are such dorks,” Parker sighed.

“This is  _ your _ fault, you started this!” Eliot fired back at her, because apparently he’d regressed to the level of a seven year old. The ridiculousness of it all just pissed him off more. “Okay, you know what? Fine. — _ Hardison! _ Your girlfriend wants us to kiss. Get over here.”

“Hey, now, we just agreed—”

Eliot pointed to the sand at his feet. “ _ Come. Here. _ ”

With a wary glance at Parker, Hardison sidled closer, stopping just within arm’s reach. “You really want to do this?” he asked tentatively.

No.

...Yes?

_ Fuck it. _ Eliot stepped into Hardison’s space and pulled him down.

What had set out to be an angry and aggressive kiss gentled as it met Hardison’s hesitancy, because a kiss should never be a weapon unless both people were agreed that they were fighting. They sank into the rhythm of it, the sway of give and take, and it was less strange than he’d thought it would be (aside from Hardison’s facial hair, and even that was only a brief, minor distraction). He could taste sea salt on Hardison’s mouth, feel the wash of warm breath against his lips as Hardison sighed into him—not a perfunctory kiss, a quick smack to prove...whatever he’d wanted to prove, Eliot realized. Somehow they’d settled into it, and it was...not bad.

They eased apart finally, Eliot rocking back onto his heels, his hands dropping from where they’d cupped Hardison’s face. Eliot licked his lips, then had to look away from the earnest wonder and unexpectedly shy delight in Hardison’s smile. Instead, he glanced down at the sand, then up to discover Parker looking at the two of them with the crinkle-eyed feline smirk that said,  _ See, I was right _ .

Damn it. He pushed Hardison away—much more gently than he should have, he realized, because that lack of force was a tell, and he did  _ not  _ need to be encouraging this...this...he didn’t even know what Parker was thinking this was, what  _ Hardison _ was thinking this was. Bisexuality, polyamory, open relationships, whatever the hell they were looking at here—all of that stuff was complicated, and he didn’t  _ do _ complicated, not when it was so easy to find someone just to have a good time with, no strings attached.

_ You’re already attached _ , murmured that small, quiet voice deep inside his heart.

_ Yes _ , and that was  _ exactly _ the reason—one of  _ many _ reasons—why this was a terrible idea, because he’d  _ promised _ himself to them, with everything that was in him, and if they fucked this up, if  _ he  _ fucked this up—

What would they do?

Where would he  _ go _ ?

“Okay! Great kiss, guys,” Parker announced, breaking into the rapid-fire flurry of his thoughts. Beaming, she clapped him on the shoulder as he stared at her in disbelief. “Now let’s get back to the hotel. It’s freaking cold out here, and I want a hot shower and room service.”

“Room service,” Eliot muttered as she turned away. Damn woman was going to give him mental whiplash. He glanced over at Hardison, expecting the eye contact to be painfully awkward, but instead Hardison just tilted his head in Parker’s direction, his raised brows and faint smile saying,  _ That’s our Parker. _

And somehow...they were okay.

Because this was the same Hardison who’d given him space to open up about his dad on his own terms; because this was Parker just being entirely Parker, navigating the world according to her own weird logic and even weirder innocence. Because they were his, and he was theirs, now and until the end. They all three knew each other deeper than anyone else had ever known them, and he found himself relaxing into that one home truth, into the closeness and trust that made their partnership work so well.

It would take more than a few complications to wreck all of that.

(And it  _ had _ been a pretty good kiss, although he wouldn’t say it had been a  _ great _ one.

...maybe they could work on it some? Since Parker didn’t seem to mind?)

“ _ Argh! _ Come  _ on _ !”

And he was jerked back to the present for the second time in under two minutes as Parker grabbed hold of his arm and hauled at it, dragging him stumbling along behind her.

“Parker! My clothes—” Twisting free of her grip, he lunged for his stuff, and was just able to scoop it all up before she recaptured him. Linking arms with him and Hardison, she marched the three of them off across the beach as he struggled not to fumble and drop anything.

“How’re we gonna get back to the hotel?” Hardison complained, reaching past Parker to take the boot that Eliot was about to lose hold of, freeing him up to manage the rest. “We can’t call for a ride; we don’t got a phone.”

“We don’t need a phone,” Parker scoffed. “Because you know what else they have at that house, aside from lots of really ugly towels? They have  _ ATVs _ .” She cackled with anticipation, and Hardison groaned.

“Oh no, mama, you are  _ not _ driving me around on one of those things, nope, nuh-uh....”

And just like that, just like always, Eliot was swept up and carried along with them.

With an inward smile, he surrendered himself to their tide.

{ Coda }

“So,” Hardison said, leaning against the doorframe, a shit-eating grin on his face. “A snook, huh?”

Eliot paused only for a beat before resuming the rhythm of knife against whetstone. He hoped Hardison hadn’t noticed. “What’re you babbling on about now?” he grumbled, not bothering to hide his irritation. “Is that something from your World of whatsit, Minecraft?”

Hardison didn’t take the nerd bait. Instead he wagged a finger at Eliot, smirking. “ _ You _ are a  _ snook _ . More specifically, the common snook,  _ Centropomus undecimalis _ .”

“I have no idea what—”

“I did some research, and it’s a very, how shall I say it,  _ distinctive _ set of markings.” Hardison’s eyes sparkled with glee. “The protandry was also a hint.”

Eliot gave up the sharpening so he could direct his glare at Hardison. “Yeah, and? You gonna make fun of me for it?”

Hardison shook his head. “Naw, man, it’s cool. I respect your fishnicity.”

“My fish….” Eliot pointed his knife at Hardison. “Get out.”

“Aww, El, don’t be like that,” Hardison crooned. “ ’Sides, what’re you gonna do, fillet me?”

“Two words,” Eliot snarled through gritted teeth. “ _ Fish. Slime _ .”

“Ooo-wooo-ooh!” Hardison danced backward in mock horror and disappeared behind the doorframe, laughing, only to stick his head back into view a moment later.

“By the way, I read that snook is good eating,” he said with a leer before vanishing once again.

“ _ Dammit _ ,  _ Hardison! _ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Why a snook? Well, I was originally looking for an ocean fish that could be caught in Texas (since Oklahoma is landlocked, and Christian Kane was born in Texas). Then, in an actual article about fishing for snook, I read this:
> 
> "The snook has a most distinctive body shape..."  
> "Snook are proportionately very thick through the shoulders..."  
> "One of the best for all-around fighting ability..."
> 
> I mean, c'mon.
> 
> Many thanks to darkwingdukat for beta reading! ^_^


End file.
